More about Le Berne

Vino Nobile di Montepulciano is back. Once considered the greatest wine of Italy (“a very favorite wine” according to Thomas Jefferson), it lost its mojo in the 1990s and 2000s when point chasers flocked to next door Brunello di Montalcino. Vino Nobile tried to keep up, by pushing the envelope on plush fruit and new oak, and the results were very mixed. But in recent years, things have been looking up again.

Let’s first let’s travel back to that dark time for Vino Nobile. It was in 1997 — peak dark time — that a grower called La Berne (Etruscan for “the hill”) stopped selling off grapes and started bottling their own wines. A few years later, a few of us were looking to stock the emerging Brooklyn wine boutique scene with something from Vino Nobile. It was still something that people asked for. Still a category of historic importance. Every store needed to have at least one.

But it was still that dark time, and most Vino Nobile still kind of sucked. It was really hard to find something decent! Until one day — we tasted La Berne. Here was brightness! Energy! Elegance! Everything that you want in Sangiovese but that was too often missing back then. We went on to sell hundreds of cases of the wine. Maybe some of you remember it.

Over the years, we lost touch with the importer — a tiny, one-man operation — and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano has enjoyed a revival. The whole DOC has rediscovered itself and its very high potential; elegant examples of Sangiovese are now being produced by dozens of producers. We have enjoyed many of them here at Flatiron.

Recently La Berne made a reappearance in our lives. We were not surprised to see that it was our partners at Polaner (importer of favorite Sangiovese from the likes of Stella di Campalto and Pian dell-Orino) who were now bringing in the wines. We tasted the lineup, and they were just as good as we remembered.

La Berne’s re-appearance comes with a slight twist. Starting in 2021, producers of Vino Nobile are entitled to present top wines from single vineyards called Le Pieve — intended to be supreme expressions of Sangiovese along the lines of a Chianti Gran Selezione or a Brunello Riserva. La Berne’s historic first ever release of a Pieve wine — sourced from a high-altitude limestone rich vineyard.